Everything In Between

I’ve been recovering from what I hope is a twenty-four hour bug of some kind. I feel a lot better now than I did in the morning, so I’m holding out hope that I’ll feel just fine tomorrow. In order to remain at least somewhat productive, I spent most of today catching up on my newsfeeds and finding new interesting blogs to check out.

I’ve been especially interested in blogging, RSS and content syndication, and podcasting lately. These are areas and technologies that have had unprecedented growth lately, as more and more big companies (such as the New York Times and Yahoo!) are strongly pushing the adoption of RSS. (Google is pushing Atom.) Here is a brief recap of the various things I’ve been reading around the web today:

• I’ve been keeping an eye out on Lockergnome’s RSS fanatics news feed because there has been a remarkable amount of fascinating information coming in through that channel lately. Several of the latest etries have had a strong business focus, such as this article explaining how RSS meets the needs of direct marketers just as well as email does.

  The post explains, in marketing terminology (as opposed to technical terminology), the benefits of the client-pull paradigm to deliver targetted, personalized advertising and communication to customers in the same way email newsletters frequently do today. One of the chief benefits of RSS, however, is that it doesn’t have to deal with spam filters which means that your message is guaranteed to get to the client. (This is built into the publish-subscribe nature of RSS as opposed to email.)

• Also via Lockergnome, one of the new quality blogs I’ve found is Ms. Debbie Weil’s articulate writings about business and blogging and how the two can work well together. She’s a recognized marketing expert who has become an expert on what blogging can do for a company’s brand image.

  Her recent podcast interview with Rok Hrasnik is a very insightful look into how the business world sees blogs and content syndication, and how we in the tech world aren’t quite getting our message across yet.

• Another interesting use for RSS comes in the form of intra-organization communication. In such a case, content syndication solutions can replace the role of most mass-email communications within organizations. This has myriad benefits, most prominent of which are the increase in employee productivity and the assurance that each employee receives the syndicated message at the same time. (No more spam filter and email relay delays.)

  Also, if you’ve ever worked in a large organization’s offices like I have, you’re already familiar with the problems that huge amounts of email causes. When everybody sends email to everyone else, most of that email looses its relevance causing confusion and wasting time. Add to that the daily corporate-wide announcements, alerts, and other notifications sent via email and you’re suddenly dealing with email overload.

• Another great example of a content syndication application comes from the new job search engine Indeed. Indeed is a lot like Google, only they crawl job-posting sites like Monster.com and CraigsList and index all the available job positions. You then search for available positions and Indeed returns the results to you.

  What makes Indeed stand above the rest is that its search result listings are available as an RSS feed. This means you enter your search once and then your news reader repeats it for you every time it checks the feed. (In fact, CraigsList has been doing this for some time. They also offer email subscriptions, but do you see how much more of hassle this is?)

  The advantage is obvious: no more wasting time typing in the same searches and no more wasting time signing up for and managing email “alerts” for search results. Google lets you sign up for Google Alerts, which notify you when new documents are indexed that match your search terms, but I’d much rather see them implement this with a hassle-free solution that won’t clutter my inbox such as RSS.

• And while we’re on the subject of using RSS for any publish-subscribe and client-pull communication, why don’t we consider the implications of using branded RSS aggregating software to get at all this content. In fact, branded RSS aggregators are gaining popularity very quickly.

  The experts say this will help create a “stickier relationship” between publishers and readers, and this, of course, means stronger branding and a more powerful influence on consumers. The question here, though, is will it bring on the RSS wars?

Content syndication technologies are gaining popularity as more and more applications for them are being found. Marketers are beginning to understand the advantages of RSS and many new business models which are based on the technology are being tested—and succeeding.

RSS doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with blogging, though blogs did popularize the technology. So buckle your seat belts, because RSS is getting ready for prime time and it’s beginning to hit the marketing and business worlds by storm.

I think I might be coming down with something. I woke today with major aches and pains all through my body. My back, my legs, my arms, and my feet were especially painful. Despite this, I did make it out to the New York City Web Design Meetup, albeit an hour late.

The Meetup went extremely well. I found myself answering more questions than I asked, and the questions I did ask had nothing to do with web design. I spoke at length about CSS, the natural document flow, the semantic web, and all that various web design usability and accessibility stuff I always spout. People seemed impressed, which is good, and I gave my card out to most everyone in the group.

There were some great tips from others as well, mostly centering around software applications (Firefox extensions, web design editors, and the like), and there was also a somewhat-heated yet brief debate over the usability and purpose of Flash within web sites. Naturally, I maintain that a Flash movie is not and never will be a web site. One of the points I failed to make at the meeting, however, was that HTML is what delivers the Flash content in the first place. Designers would do well to remember this fact!

After the meetup, myself and two other attendees (one from the Mac Meetup I run and the other from the Sci-Fi Meetup who I travelled home with again tonight) walked over to a chinese restaurant for dinner. (For me, it was breakfast.) We talked at length about various other things, most notably WEP/WPA encryption, PKI and cryptography, and bits and pieces relating to OpenSSL and network administration (like the use of VNC and stuff of that sort).

Right now, however, I am in major pain and looking forward to collapsing on my bed. Wish me well, since tomorrow I’m hosting the WordPress Meetup for the first time as well as the Rubik’s Cube Meetup down in the Village.

Oh, and in case you missed the quiet announcement yesterday, I’ve started podcasting.

I have been doing very well these past few days. I’ve been feeling happy, getting things done, and meeting new people, several of whom are quickly becoming friends. (That’s saying a lot for me.) I’ve barely spent much time at home for the past few days and have been going out quite regularly.

All of these social events have begun thanks to the myriad social networks I’ve joined online lately. I don’t really frequent more than about half of them regularly, but the fact that I’m on them all has given me this sense of outreach, like I’m trying to find like-minded people and letting them find me. If nothing else, that’s very optimistic and it helps keep my head on my shoulders whenever I think about how much I dislike humanity at large.

Which reminds me, actually, that I’ve been wanting to do much more with all the RSS feeds that these networks publish. Specifically, I want to get my StumbleUpon site review blog aggregated on this site, as well as my list of goals at 43 Things, to name a few. (My del.icio.us links are another which comes to mind.)

Sunday Night’s Hypomania

So on Sunday night, I spoke with an acquaintance online and despite the largely superficial nature of our conversation (how much can you really say about computers and cereal?) I really enjoyed it. I had woken up that day in the late afternoon, around six o’clock or so, and was originally disappointed in myself because I expected the night to be fruitless. Usually, when I wake up that late and don’t feel very motivated, nothing gets done and I spend the night wishing I felt more productive.

Thankfully, that conversation started the night off on the right foot. Beginning in a proper state of mind has proven to be one of the most important factors for me to get things done. I ended up staying up all night working on Maymay Media’s improved navigation bars and then, past the crack of dawn, started putting together my portfolio.

Obviously, I still have more to do. I’ve learned a long time ago that web sites are never finished, merely abandoned at some point, but I’ve also learned that this is a good thing. Leaving things unfinished gives me a reason, if not always the motivation, to return to them.

Monday’s Marathon

After staying up for all of Sunday night and most of Monday morning, I was sure I’d collapse sometime in the early afternoon on Monday. Instead, I glanced at my calendar and saw that one of the meetings I wanted to attend was going to be happening that night. The draw to this meeting wasn’t actually the meeting itself, however. It was a couple of gals I’d met the week before who said they’d be there that night.

It’s very rare for me to find anybody I feel is both intelligent and nice and also with whom I can feel instantly at ease and comfortable around. Miraculously, the meeting on the 28^th of March, I met two of these people at the same time. Not surprisingly, the two are mutual friends.

Last week the three of us spoke at some length about various topics. I gave one of them, Melinda, my card (the critical networking tool of which I ran out that night!) and said good night. Throughout the week, Melinda and I exchanged emails in which we continued talking about geeky things such as the FPDF PHP library, CSS, economics and the like.

This week, after the meeting, we spoke about far more personal things (though there was some geekiness thrown into the mix), such as family and friends or the lack thereof. Melinda and Hannah invited me to come over to their place for the night (actually, Melinda’s roommate’s place where Hannah frequently crashes) to watch a movie and hang out. I happily accepted, glad to be able to continue the conversation and also thankful that I could avoid the subways that night. By then, it was already past midnight!

Sleeping Over at a New Friend’s Place

I learned several things at their place. First, the best shortcut to steamed milk is through some kind of kitchen doo-dad that looks way too much like a sex toy to my eyes to be kept in the kitchen. Second, and more importantly, there really are people I can relate to out there. I just have to find them.

The conversation lasted ’til about three in the morning (there was no movie-watching), when I was finally too tired to do much of anything and had to go to sleep. Melinda was kind enough to make my bed on their sofa and provided several blankets to sleep with. I fell asleep very easily and slept soundly until noon the next day.

I awoke feeling refreshed, rested, and relaxed. (Yes, relaxed. Don’t ask, that’s just what I felt.) I hopped out to the deli to grab some milk and a quick supplement to the breakfast I was provided (yummy bagels and lox spread), and then Melinda and I spoke for another couple of hours in the afternoon.

I knew I had things to do that day but found myself trying to find reasons to stay at her place and not come home to my empty apartment. I did come home, however, and spent much of the day listening to music I hadn’t heard in years and continuing to work on my personal projects. That night, I hopped on down to the Sci-Fi Meetup.

Tuesday’s Terrific Meetup

Though it was my first time at this particular meetup group, I enjoyed it immensely. There were at least eight others there, and most were rather talkative. All were welcoming and friendly.

The best part of the whole thing, however, was that I recognized a man whom I had first met months ago at a PHP Meetup. After the meetup was over, the two of us took the same train home since we live only blocks apart. The man is a business-owner and a long-time Linux user, which are only two reasons why I’m glad I got to talk to him so much.

All in all, a very productive day.

Penn’s Birthday Was on Wednesday

Today, (actually, yesterday by now) I spent the day with my father and with my younger brother, Penn. Penn was given the day off from school in celebration of his 8^th birthday. I joined the two of them at 4:30 in the afternoon to go see Robots, the heart-warming animated movie made by the Ice Age people.

After that, we headed to Neutral Ground so Penn could get new Duelmasters cards and I could learn the game. (Don’t give me that look, it’s not so bad and it was for him.) I’ve heard a lot about this place from my father, who seems absolutely entranced by the whole concept of trading card games. One of the things he kept saying is something I noticed while I was there, too, and which gave the place an air of familiarity unlike anything else.

Respect and Equality; The Way It Should Have Been Naturally

People at Neutral Ground treated each other with the utmost respect. The thing that might seem strange to some people is that these are people with absolutely no common denominator; old people, young people, black people, white people, thugs, geeks. It didn’t matter who you were as long as you enjoyed playing games with others.

Several people came up to us as we were playing and asked questions about our decks. Penn answered them all smartly, and they listened to him (an eight-year-old, remember) as if he were their age. It was just so refreshing.

Why aren’t more people like this? Why is there this stupid notion that respect comes from age or some other status like money? The way things worked at Neutral Ground seemed to make far more sense to me than anything else I’ve encountered. Status was a non-issue, and thanks to that respect was mutual and sincere and permeated every square inch of the place. I’d go back just to watch people interact with each other and if you ever get the opportunity to do so, I highly recommend it.

Sleep Cycles Messed Up Again

All of this excitement and happiness has caused one not-so-great thing; my sleep is absolutely erratic. At this point, however, I’m beginning to think that this sort of behavior is more natural for me than anything else. Why fight the whole bipolar hypomania thing when it’s so productive?

Yes, yes, I know the arguments. I’ve also been on both sides of the fence; I’ve felt great when I had a routine in a different way from how wonderful I felt when I was hypomanic and productive. I just don’t think it’s helpful for me to make a choice for one over another at this point. And with that, I bid you (an early morning) “good night.”

Just to let you guys know, I’m going to try out the supposed “next big thing” in the blogging world: audio blogging, aka podcasting. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll be using Audioblogger as a hosted provider which makes everything a lot easier for me. The only downside is that it isn’t really connected to this blog at all, and I like to keep things pretty centralized when it comes to my life.

Nevertheless, we’ll see how this goes. There’s no real content at my audio blog yet but, if you’re interested in keeping up with my entries, subscribe to my audio blog’s Atom news feed to be alerted when I post new stuff.

I think Liz has seen the light!

I was just looking but not really looking at my “Start” button and I swear to God it said “Stab.”

Personally, I think she’s got the right idea. ;)

• Maymay Dot Net Site Usage for May ‘04 to March ‘05
• Originally uploaded by maymaym.
• Added to the photostream on 2 Apr ‘05, 9.01pm PST.

I was checking my server logs today, which I don’t do nearly often enough, and this interesting trend emerged very obviously from just a short glance at Webalyzer’s statistics. Over the past year, my site’s traffic has more than tripled from its low point of just under 19,000 hits per month (in August of 2004) to a high of over 77,000 hits per month (in February of 2005).

The actual visitor count sounds less impressive but actually shows even more dramatic improvement over the course of the year. (Remember, hits are the total number of HTTP requests, not the number of unique visitors to a site.) In May of 2004, this site was drawing approximately 900 unique visitors during the course of the month. During March of 2005, over 11,000 unique visitors have viewed my site. That’s over a ten-fold increase in visitor traffic in the span of one year.

Of course, this makes sense. Blogs are lovely things for traffic and the longer one keeps one going the more traffic one is bound to generate. Overall, this is encouraging, though it also serves as a poignant reminder to check my server logs more often, damnit! Seriously, there’s nothing more beneficial to a site owner than knowing what, exactly, is going on within their site.

Another interesting point is that for nearly the past half year, one of the most popular search terms that have garnered me the most referrals from Google included the words “cygwin ssh x11 forwarding” or thereabouts. That’s because of this old entry on Cygwin X11 forwarding through an SSH tunnel that I wrote about and discovered a bit of a snaffu you might run into. What’s interesting to note about this is that that particular entry, due to its dense keywords placement and good KEI rank, has been solely responsible for a significant portion of my hits from search engines. Wow!

I really ought to find out how to glean more and better information from these server log thingies. I’ve never really invested enough time into learning how to properly understand them, which seems very worth doing now. (So maybe I’ll get started on that soon.)

Also, it’s not only good to know where my readers are coming from and what they’re looking at, but also where they’re going to when I send them off-site with my links. That’s where MyBlogLog comes in really handy, and it has already given me some valuable insight into what you people click on and when. :)

Anyway, here’s three cheers for traffic. Just don’t go crazy overboard and run up my bandwidth bills, y’hear? Or if you do, the least you can do is donate a little to help me pay them!